SuomiKaataa2

Mercury, The Original Seven Ok, I have written already about Apollo, so let's be totally confusing and I will go back to the program of Original Seven. The Mercury Program, the piloted spaceflight between May 1961 and May 1963. These seven original American astronauts were Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard, Deke Slayton. The main goal was to put a man into the Earth's orbit and return him safely to the Earth. Mercury capsule was a pressurized cabin supplied by food, oxygen and water for a day.   The member of Original Seven group took part of all following programs: Mercury, Gemini, Apollo (Gus Grissom died during the fire in Apollo 1), Space shuttle. John Glenn became the oldest person to fly in space in Shuttle flight. The first man in space on the orbital flight was the Soviet cosmonaut Jurij Gagarin (on April 21, 1961). Alan Shepard became the first American astronaut on suborbital flight 3 weeks after him, on May...

The Pioneer program is quite big series of U.S. unmanned missions designed for planetary exploration, launches between 1958 and 1978. The name Pioneer comes from the space Pioneer exploration aim of the missions. To remind you, you will probable remember the most notable plaque from Pioneer 10. Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 left our solar system. The early Pioneer missions (1958-1960) were designed to achieve the Earth's escape velocity and to study the Moon.  Pioneer 0, 1, 2 (lunar orbiter) , 3, P-1, P-3, 4 (lunar flyby), 5 (interplanetary space between Earth and Venus), P-30, P-31: most of them failed, except Pioneer 2, 4, and 5. I would say that nothing is failure, if we learn from the mistake. Who doesn't try, doesn't win!! The later Pioneer missions (1965-1978) was a new series 5 years later. They were supposed to study first inner solar system before sending them towards Jupiter and Saturn flyby. The missions took poor pictures than the Voyager program. Pion...

In the Moon race I cannot forget  Ranger program , which was series of U.S. unmanned space missions in 1960s. The main objective was to get closer image of the surface of the Moon. The first 6 flights failed. The program was also called in certain time as "shoot and hope" .  The program had 3 block phases with different mission objectives. They have planned multiple launches in order to increase success of the mission. 

Surveyor (from NASA program) was a robotic spacecraft program to the surface of the Moon. It was the first U.S. mission to make a soft landing on the Moon.  5 missions, including the first one, succeeded. Surveyor 2 crashed at high velocity and Surveyor 4 lost contact, so probably exploded.  All of the other spacecraft are still on the Moon. None of them was planned to return to Earth. Some part of Surveyor 3 were return to Earth by Apollo 12, which landed in 1969.  source: wikipedia On the picture of Moon you can see nicely landing spots of all mission with the particular numbers: Luna (red triangles), Apollo (green triangles), and Surveyor (yellow triangles). The primary goal was to demonstrate soft landings on the lunar surface, to prepare it for Apollo program ( Apollo Program ), and to test the lunar soil, because it was not known how deep the dust on the Moon was before this mission. Surveyor 1 was launched on May 30, 1966. It has made soft landing, 4 mo...

Unlike Earth, Mars does not have inner dynamo to keep a proper magnetic field. This does not mean that Mars does not have any magnetosphere. The process is just slightly different from what we know about Earth, or I have written about Jupiter so far for example, in article Magnetosphere of Jupiter .  First I would like to mention few interesting summaries about Mars: Dozens of spacecraft, including orbiters, landers, and rovers, have been sent to Mars by the Soviet Union, US, Europe, and Japan 2/3 of all missions failed, see example in article  Soviet Mars Probe Program F irst indication of the weakness of the magnetic field: Mariner 4 flyby in 1965 (at closest approach 3.9 radii of Mars)  N o indication of Earth like dipole Phobos-2 observations of solar wind – Mars interaction in 1989 ( Solar Wind ) Magnetosphere of Mars is much more simple and smaller than the Earth's magnetosphere. Generally it is formed by the solar wind magnetic fiel d....

I was just thinking that Soviet Space Program is not that well known as U.S. programs, so I have decided to continue searching for any other interesting programs in the similar time period as Apollo and Luna programs.  The Mars probe program was a series of Soviet unmanned spacecraft to explore Mars launched between between 1960 and 1973. They consisted of flyby probes, landers and orbiters as well. During Zond program, in article Soviet Lunar Program , Zond 2 was sent to Mars, but it failed.  After many failures, Mars 2 (launched on May 19, 1971) and Mars 3  (launched on May 28, 1971) missions reached Mars. They were identical spacecraft, consisting of orbiter and lander, which means the first spacecraft reaching the surface of Mars. The orbiters played among the scientific goals as a communication link between the lander and Earth. Scientific goals consisted of making images of clouds and surfaces, monitor solar wind and interplanetary and Martian magnetic fi...

Previously I have written about History of Solar wind ,  Solar wind . And also I have made summary of  Apollo program . Now I have decided to move to the Soviet lunar program as well. They have achieved many milestones in the space history. The Soviet Lunar Program had 20 successful missions to the Moon: first probe to impact the Moon, first flyby and picture of the far side of the Moon by Luna 3, first soft landing on the Moon, first lunar orbiter, first probe return to the Earth. Those mission consisted of two series: Luna missions (all together 24) and Zond missions (5 missions). Soviet Space Program The Luna Missions The first in-situ observation of the solar wind and first lunar flyby was made by Luna 1 (more details in the article) in 1959 from Baikonur Cosmodrome . The planned impact to the Moon was made by next mission Luna 2 launched on September 12, 1959.  Luna 2 was similar to Luna 1 design. The mission for example confirmed that Moon had no ap...